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Lore
This is a good pool of meditations. - The Lord and his gardens is an interesting angle. However, as you mentioned with the oil/corporations idea, I feel that it would focus too much attention to this villain. But your ideas about how green spaces affect your surfing are directly on point. I also particularly like the way you are thinking about the creatures and their impact on the play experience. I've been trying to think about that as well, but your ideas are more fun. - Here's where I'm at: - Primarily, the story is one about hero vs environment. The environment is one of the primary compelling elements of story. It's characterized by its desolate, harsh, and uncompromising features. The major theme of the story is restoration and survival in this environment. - In connecting it with the PR mindset, the climate change concept is the obvious connection to draw, but I'd like to frame with an optimistic tone. So much about media and the like which are concerned with this topic focus on the terror of it; how bad it will be and how we are all doomed. It's something that I feel is effective in delivering the realities, but also does little to inspire capability to change. I want to take the next step in the process to where people (or at least one) finally decide to do something, against these terrible odds they created against themselves. - The background is that of this plateau/oasis. This world/region was once verdant and plentiful. But as resources dwindled, the land began to die. Forests and farmland shriveled up and died. Dustbowls overtook the landscape. What water remained was lost beneath the dust and sand. People had to retreat to areas that could still provide. Eventually as more of the potable water disappeared, the remaining oases, places where the underground water pools and can be accesses, became the only places possible for humans. Even during this shrinking, and while enormous numbers perished, humanity's technology continued to improve. Situated in these oases, factions of humanity created small cities and communities and constructed giant pumps to bring water to the surface. - However, as is usually inevitable, conflict arises. The resulting battles over control or for malice weakens every faction. Such that when the world's increasingly hostile state increased, none were prepared. Sandstorms of incredible magnitude, aggressive hostile creatures seeking the water began to be commonplace, and simple fact that resources were becoming ever more scarce and harder to cultivate. Each faction fought hard to survive, but each eventually failed and had to abandon their well and beg refuge of their former foes. Now humanity is clustered in a single outcroping, siphoning water from the wells from afar. - With no more wars left to wage and realizing the absolute reality that this could be the end, the human society puts every last effort to rebuild; not only their own existence, but the world they damaged. Sparse sections of farmland are created, myth and law mandate careful use of resources, and new scientific efforts promise non-wasteful energy production and use with water. But it wasn't long after that, one by one, the wells stopped producing. The remaining water reserves will not last long. All the good intentions of the humans is nothing without water. The people have made multiple attempts to reach and somehow restart the wells: final flights of aircraft, caravans of the remaining war machines, and scientific endeavors. All ended in failure. Humanity cowers on the cliffs of its last city, doing everything it can to keep the desert sands and its horrors from snuffing out the last of it. - Laughably, one person steps forward holding a barely-functioning piece of hardware and promises that they will turn the wells back on. It's a ridiculous notion, but there is nothing else. --- --- In my mind, this backstory would be largely be alluded to through the environment more than anything. In this permutation, the game would maybe start out with a cutscene in the city where three (equivalent to number of wells) faction elders gift the surfer with starting tech like the kinetic shield, booster for the board, and maybe fancy goggles or something. The surfer then turns, the pan around shows the spires of the wells in the distance. The surfer then surfs out the one-way gate into the desert. The rest of the backstory would be told through what is found in the environment. The player would regularly come across remnants of previous attempts to reach the wells. These could act as the mechanisms which do stat upgrades to your stuff. You may find a crashed aircraft on a cliff, but you have to get up to it. There may be a broken tank, but a crowd of creatures are guarding it, etc. Salvaging tech or resources from the remains extends your max energy/boost. Maybe even a some audio/written logs if we're feelin it. - Having abandoned human settlements at or near the wells provides a better reason why the surfer would find ability upgrades for the board to then use at the well. Also the syphoning idea would allow us to literally run a pipe from the home city to the well, ensuring the player always knows which way leads to a goal. Raul's ideas for the creatures would fit in perfectly, though I would prefer them to be creatures rather than robots, there's no reason we couldn't have a mix. The idea that there could be some leftover autonomous machinery from the wars would fit. At the very least the concept of the gourds as proximity mines. If we wanted to have like a final event thing too, the last city could have been in the middle of constructing a well nearby but it needs to be primed. So when the other wells are active, there's some final event that the home well is activated. --- Same as you said, these ideas are malleable. My main thing though is that I think this story should stay as a hero vs environment concept. Conspicuously, the water planet is missing from this wall of text. I really like the visual of it, but there just doesn't seem to be any other good reason to have it.